Week 20, Season 2015 - 16

Things are heating up in the field and the weeds are taking over the row middles again.  This is when growing produce organically starts to get even harder than it already is in west central Florida. Our transition time should be better than last year and we will have a few lean weeks of produce.  Squash and zucchini are looking good and should start to harvest next week.  Cherry tomatoes are also looking good except for a few plants out in the field.  There are a few small green tomatoes already on the vines.  Green beans are almost ready to flower and cucumbers in the greenhouse are starting to produce the first stages of fruit.  Potatoes harvested last week for the first time this season and taste great.  Two varieties of corn had to get replanted for poor germination.  The southern peas also had poor germination and will not produce a crop as I had no more seeds and it will be too late in the season to order and plant them. We might get a crop of eggplants from the same plants that we had from the fall.  I pruned them back and see some flowers since it has warmed up.

Our strawberries are being eaten again over the last few weeks. I hate to keep loosing them each week as these are super popular in the share baskets.  I put another strand of hot wire next to the ground last week thinking that the animal that was eating them was going under the electric fence.  Things looked good all the way up to Wednesday and I thought we were on track to harvest for Saturday with nothing being eaten.   Until I checked them today (Friday) and again everything that was ripe was eaten again.  Now I think that it might be coyotes going over the fence.  I found what look like dog tracks on the watermelon rows and around the area right next door to the strawberries.  I honestly  have no clue what is eating them.  We caught two possums and the problems stopped for a while and I thought we solved the issue.  I am thinking about changing the layout of the fence to protect the fruiting plants instead of the growing area.  Maybe if I run strands directly over the plants this might deter the animals.  I have spent a bunch of time and effort on this issue with minimal payback and I hate to waste more time taking down the fence and rearranging it again but I am almost at that point.

Here are some pictures from the farm and beyond.

Guatemalan orchid no bigger than my finger tip. Amazingly these flowers get pollinated.

A broken pipe flood irrigates the field.

Planes practice over the farm for airshow

A pre-vermin picture of our strawberries!

Pest Control Operations

I have always thought that the most important thing a farmer can put on his crops is his/her shadow. In other words being observant to what is going on in the field is extremely important when you are limited to a handful of organic pesticides. In an operation like ours there is no easy way out in dealing with pests. We can't just mindlessly and indiscriminately spray our fields with insecticides. Being observant is crucial to understanding what and when things are going on with pests and their predators. I've noticed during the fall and into the spring small flocks of little migratory birds fly across the fields generally moving east or west and stop to pick insects off the plants. I have watched them pick off aphids from the leaves and then hop to the next plant to do the same. It seems that we are in a major flight path for these little predators. I've also noticed that they tend to fly to a spot that is higher than the surroundings in relative terms.In this picture of my freakishly large red bok choi that I am waiting to save seeds from there is one leaf that is taller than the surroundings and it attracts many bird stops. You can see it sticking up on the top picture. Apparently to the birds it is a great lay over spot. The next picture supports my observations. With having a small farm we have the benefit of being able to increase the biodiversity of the farmed land to enhance the productivity. I had the idea that maybe I could get the flight path changed somewhat. I thought that I might place little roosting posts around crops that typically attract pests to see if I can slightly deviate the flight path to our benefit and the benefit of the birds.

I will place the roosts this weekend and observe what happens. The picture above is the bird in action in the bok choi/leek row. I believe that it is a palm warbler. Earlier in the year we planted mulberry trees along the edge of the vegetable plots to offer cover to birds that might hang out in the fields a little longer. It seems that if there is no structure they tend not to linger in the open. I am also hoping to build some fertility to the ground with planting deciduous tree crops and gain a little shade for plants that stress out in the summer heat such as lettuce. We will also be able to harvest the berries when they are ripe. Hopefully it will be a win, win, win, win solution.

Farm Happenings

We have just planted our squash, zucchini, napa cabbage, and red bok choy out to the fields. We also planted 10 different varieties of lettuce in 72 cell trays. I had to spray some organic pesticides for aphids and whiteflies. We are also starting to develop some downy mildew on the cucumbers. The cucumbers are coming in early this year; we have already picked about a dozen. I hope they hold up for harvest time in November. Our green beans are looking very yellow and our eggplant seems to be in a holding pattern. This is what happens when you change fertilizers. It is best if you can see how it works on different items and different conditions. We were not able to get our usual Sustane fertilizer and had to go with something else. It is not reacting the same way. We also have not had any rain lately so the fertilizer that is releasing is not making it to the roots. This might explain our yellow beans and slow eggplant.

My youngest brother Patrick has joined us for a few weeks out at the farm. He needed a place to crash and was willing to work in the fields. He has been a big help so far, cleaning up the nursery and planting many of the vegetables in the trays and field.

It's nice to see the oranges starting to turn orange again. They almost go unnoticed during most of the season disguised in a camouflage green. One really needs to look for them on the tree. And then almost magically they start turning the first shades of yellow, and then reappear into view. This is where I start thinking about how good they taste in the wintertime, and about how nice it is to cut one off the tree and eat it while I'm working.

We had a loss of one of the young chicks this last week. Something, maybe a raccoon reached under the hen house and took a bite of one and killed it. We made some adjustments to the pen and hopefully it will not happen again. Nathan and I got it out of the pen and buried it beneath one of the orange trees

Week #7 of the Third Period

We are winding our way down to the end of the season. It looks like the trial of Surround clay mixed with copper is working pretty well on the cucurbits and the tomatoes.

Here is a picture of a zucchini with Surround spray

I have remarkably fewer stink bugs on the tomatoes this year. And they are almost ripening up so I can actually pick them on the plants instead of picking them a the greenish pink stage and holding them. That was a big winner. The sunflowers did well this year and I would like to do more next year. The peaches are ripening up and are still small. But they received no fertilizer this year and are doing better than expected. I hope to fertilize them in the next month with local horse manure.

I was able to get the local forester and the extension agent for forestry out to the property to look at the pines. Nobody is sure why they all died. There was some thought that they were planted too shallow, but even the ones that were planted high died. I think that the ground was too sandy and didn't hold water well enough for them. Now it is on to plan B. Two more harvests to go to the end of the season.

Second Eight Weeks Season Starts

We are about to start again on the next eight week harvest schedule. We needed one week to let plants resume growth after the freezes. It looks like things have started to green up again and are finally doing some growth. I have just planted some bean, peas, and sweet corn. I know it is a bit early but I am trying to out grow some of the pests that we usually see. I have been filling some trays for the tomatoes, cantaloupe (which I am going to try again), peppers, zukes, and other squash. I think that we are going to risk the cold and beat the viruses. At least that is the strategy for this season. We will see what happens.

I just put in my seed orders for the warmer weather vegetables from Johnny's Seeds, Southern Seed Exposure, and High Mowing Seeds ( a new company we are trying for the first time). I love to look through the catalogs. It is always easier to grow the vegetables in my mind than in the field. I am trying earlier ripening varieties and plant them quicker in the colder weather and see what happens. Especially the tomatoes and corn. We did corn fine last year, but struggled miserably with tomato and harvested a few green tomatoes. There was no way to let them ripen to red; too many stink bugs poking holes in them. I am trying to see if we can be harvesting when the stinkbugs get up and running. Let's see who wins this race!

I topdressed all the vegetables with Rhizogen fertilizer 3-2-2. It doesn't work as well as the Sustain which I really liked but our distributor is no longer stocking Sustain. So we will adapt, unless I can find a Sustain supplier nearby.

The potatoes are cracking the ground now and this is also another experiment we are trying to evaluate. These are planted about 6 weeks earlier than I normally would plant but I think that they can handle it. Lots of learning to be had!

Season progresses

Christmas is quickly approaching and I am not ready as usual. I plan on taking one whole day to do all my shopping about a week out. This mix of Christmas cheer and adrenaline rush is usually the way I take care of my gift purchasing.

The CSA is going well and we are getting lots of feed back from the members which is a great thing to make it better for the future. We are finding out that the greens are cooking down quite a bit, our supporters cannot remember what vegetable is what when they get home, and we are learning quite a few new recipes.

I am also learning how much to plant per supporter. Things like collards, mustard, kale, and dandelions need to have about 2.5 to 3 per person. Scallions you will need about 6 per person per week to harvest about 3 good plants per member. So it is great to figure these things out and adjust.

This year aphids and ants seem to be the biggest problems. We are getting a handle on the aphids but I am about to declare war on the ants.

We also broke our digital camera. We were getting a kick out of Anna discovering how to take pictures and the many shots she was taking of things like her toys, shoes, the blinds, Copper, and a number of countless items in the house. She wound up a little too over zealous in her photography and dropped the camera and now we have a black screen of death. We will be working this out shortly also.

The winter cover crop of rye grass seeds are coming up on half of the plot and is filling out nicely. This will be great for the added organic matter and weed control it will provide.

First Week Pick Up 2009-2010

We are getting ready for our first week's pick up on Saturday. We are a little bummed about how some of the cooler season veggies responded to the extreme (record breaking) heat we had during the fall growing times. We also were plagued by rouge grasshoppers that were probably coming from the fields where we were pushing the orange trees. The grasshoppers would fly in take a bite and then fly off. This really damaged our young transplants and set them back many weeks as well as caused a great disparity of size for our harvests. They ate the young growing tips off some of the brassica crops and caused a stunting of growth. I am thinking that the only way to get rid of them is to attract more birds to hang out near the fields. We will be planting some trees nearby to encourage our avian help to stop in for a tasty meal.



We also struggled with our lettuce. I have never heard of or dealt with ants eating seeds out of the trays that we planted before. But it happened twice before I figured out what was going on. I saw the ants the first time and thought that they were eating fungus gnat larvae. I have seen this before and considered them a help. I thought that we had bad seeds. So I replanted and then caught the ants in the act of making off with the seeds. I then tried to germinate the seeds at our home and then brought the three day old seedlings to the farm. The ants then ate the tops of the lettuce off. I have never seen or heard of this happening before. Another new one for the farm. We then germinated more seeds for a fourth time at our home and a clogged roof gutter overflowed onto the trays and washed some of the seedlings out. We are on the fifth attempt to grow lettuce and so far so good. But we will not have it ready for our first pick up.



The greens are finally growing well and the pak choi is doing great. We have a few other items and then hopefully new items will start coming on quickly. We are really looking forward to meeting everyone this weekend.

Chugging along

The Dixie Chicks are getting pretty big and curious about life outside of their box. They are really wanting out and I can't blame them. I am hoping to finish their new comparatively elegant grand coop. They will love their new space.

We have harvested all of the broccoli at one shot. It was ready really quickly as well as the lettuce. I will need to delay planting times better. Smaller quantities and more plant dates. Much of our awesome lettuce went to seed fairly rapidly. We were able to harvest some and sell some but we lost too much this year.

Jalapeno peppers, eggplants, and radishes are producing now. The red mustard and the turnips are inundated with beetles and spraying them is not helping. About every three days the pests would return after a spray. I will try them again next year but earlier to see if that makes a difference.

The Valencia oranges are ripe now and are delicious to eat off the tree. A few peaches and plums are ripening. We lost most of them to the frosts.

We are thinking of adding goats to the operation. "What goats!" I know...like we don't have enough to deal with already. We will see. I still have a little bit of sanity left to spare.

Looking Pretty Good

Here is our awesome lettuce trial!

The lettuce have all grown amazingly. Not one bad variety in the whole lot. We will be harvesting a bunch of really great looking organic heads and will be distributing them to our lucky customers.

We have added a few more customers to our Organic Produce Community Supported Agriculture endeavor. One of the customers is a vegetarian and absolutely loved our produce. She said it was incredible and very tasty. We are extremely pleased that our hard work is producing such a great product.

The "Dixie Chicks" as we have named them have been moved to a bigger box and are getting bigger by the day. Nathan loves to see them in the mornings and likes to wave at them. Our dog Copper would love to get a look at them up close but we have been hurrying him out the door to the yard in the morning. He knows they are there and tries to get a look.

We began harvesting kohlrabi this last week and we cooked some up. We steamed/sauteed them in some olive oil. It was delicious. We have never had them before and I would like to eat them again soon.

Our tomatoes, eggplants, and peppers are growing well. The broccoli and cauliflower are not. It is just too late and hot for them. We have been having an infestation of beetles in the mustard and turnips. I can't keep them off those plants. I hope some predators show up and help in the work.

Fall Season Underway

The strawberries around the county are growing, the citrus is turning sweeter by the day, and the vegetables are being harvested. I enjoy this time of the year. Holidays, baseball finals, (Go Rays!), college football (Go Gators), pro football (Go Bucs), and eating events.

Two pictures of our harvested crops!

We are still planting lettuces, cilantro, carrots, and onions. I started the red onion (Mars) in a tray and will be transplanting them out. I used organic soil and when they started to germinate out of the soil I top-dressed with an organic fertilizer (Sustane). I didn't have much luck with the horse poop this year. There was way too much wood shavings and it is having a very bad effect on the the germination of the seeds. I guess that they are drying out too fast. We are harvesting bok choy, oregano, mint, mustard, and collards. New this week to harvest are the citrus (Hamlins), dandelion, and parsley. The cucumbers are finished. I top dressed the entire field with an organic fertilizer (Bradfield) and weeded half of the plot. I will weed the next half this week and plant a few more things. The pest pressure is pretty light and there are ladybugs all over the place.

Produce, Pests, and Pumkins

This week we harvested more of the Genovese basil, which has been an excellent crop for us so far. I then cut them back pretty severely due to the poor quality of the majority of the plant. I then fertilized them with some Sustane fertilizer to perk the plants up some more. I am hoping that I can get a few more harvests before they run their course. The eggplants are still producing and I hope that I can get two more harvests on them as well. The peppers are still doing fine and still have some insect pest issues. We harvested all the white onions and they turned out wonderfully. They took a little long to grow. They are very common in terms of organic vegetables goes and the market in terms of dollars per crop are low. So I don’t think that I will grow them in terms of a crop but for pure enjoyment. The tropical pumpkins are growing nuts, climbing everywhere and starting to lighten in color to an orange tan from a dark green color. I have to look up when to harvest this plant as I have never grown it before. I have also planted our sweet potatoes for this year. I think the biggest pests we will be facing in the future are weeds. It is pretty amazing how well the weeds like to grow in a heavily nutritious ground. They really take advantage of bare, fertile soil. Next week I hope to prepare our new ground for the cover crop and till in the fall trial area for next years preparation. I need to do a better job of cover cropping when a crop is finished in order to stave off the weed pressure.

Growing a Little Bit More

We have started expanding the organic section of the farm this last week. Unfortunately I have had to push up dying citrus trees with my tractor that really isn’t made to do this kind of heavy work. I have pushed about 50’ x 50’ section, which I hope to work with a tractor if I can find the implements to do it. I should have about 15, 50 foot rows of crops to plant out. I have a few stubborn trees giving me some trouble. I will let them sit for a little while before trying to get them out again. I then hope to prepare the ground with a cover crop for the fall planting. I also hope to start the fall trial garden again and will fine tune what to plant. I am not sure how I want to deliver the water for the new section. I would like to eventually like to use drip tape on the farm but I haven’t figured out the logistics of this method yet.
We are harvesting basil, peppers, eggplant, and some parsley. Our tomatoes are barely edible from all the bug damage. I have sprayed Entrust but it does not knock down stinkbugs which are our biggest pest. I have been thinking about what could possibly prey on them and will revisit this topic later. Our peppers are just starting to senesce while still young. Which means that they are falling off the plant. The peduncle or stem end is turning yellow and the pepper drops off too early. I am not sure what is causing this but could use some help if anyone knows of an answer. I have topped dressed everything with a little more fertilizer.
In the next few weeks I will be planning out our fall growing as well as the transplant numbers to try and sell to local stores. Our one store did well and we only got back a few trays due to hot weather. I would rate it as a very big, small success. I am looking forward to expanding this value added segment. I will have some pictures soon to show.

Still growing

Things are going alright with the trial gardens. I had to rip out the squash and the melons have all but died. It is the same thing year after year with melons. They look great, put out fruit, and then die right before the fruit become harvestable. Oh well. I won't try to grow them for a while. The peppers, eggplants, beans, corn, and tropical pumpkin are growing fine. I sprayed a concoction of Bt, spinosad, and oil to control a multitude of pests that are attacking just about everything in the garden. I would like to keep harvesting cucumbers but they now have mites so I think that will end them soon. I got great harvests off them. I picked about 2 pounds per plant.


I am just about to plant some herbs to see how they will do. Basil, oregano, peppermint, cilantro, and Italian parsley. That should be planted this week.


I have harvested most of the seeds that I wanted and will turn in the winter trial. I am growing a zucchini squash for the seeds and that thing just keeps getting bigger. I am surprised that it has gotten this large.

Seed stock zucchini 24" x 5"

In the front of this picture is a purple nutsedge flower. This is one of the world's worst weeds in terms of economic crop damages and loss. It is spread via seeds and under ground tubers. I spent about 4 years working with this weed in some capacity at the University of Florida in various weed science labs. I despise this weed for all the drudgery incured at school but admire its tenacity and vigor.

Summer trials

Warm season trials

It has been a hectic couple of weeks at Steed Farms. Our whole family has been sick for the last couple of weeks, and I have flown to New York to share in the wedding of my cousin Bridget Steed. I met my brother Kevin, Dad, and four cousins from NY and two cousins that flew over from Ireland (Micheal Steed and his wife and Gavin Steed). Had a great time catching up. I designed my Brothers back corner for a garden and small orchard while I was visiting. He has a beautiful spread to work with. It is not too large to be much to manage but just the right size to be very quaint and productive.

After coming home I sold all our carrots to the Corner Store where they were having carrots as the featured item on a cooking class. I will miss not looking at them anymore and being impressed that I grew such a great carrot crop. I also sold them some cucumbers. We are at about 4 marketable cucumbers per plant at about .5 lbs per cucumber. That's not bad yields. They still look like they are going strong.

We are harvesting blackberries, blueberries, zucchini, and some tiny peaches. I can't seem to get my peaches to size up on the trees. They keep dropping off at about 1.5 - 2 inches. The bad thing is that they seem ripe. If any one knows what I am doing wrong please let me know. Our squashes are all virus infected and the melons are starting to go downhill from powdery and downy mildews. That happens every year. They form great fruit and almost make it to maturity and then the vines die. Cucurbit crops are hard to grow down hear organically. Our tomatoes are the best tomatoes I have ever grown. they look great and have a load of fruit on them now. The pepper and eggplant look fine now as well. The topical pumpkins are doing very well right now. They have huge flowers as big as my hand and tiny pumpkins started.

Tropical pumpkin female flowers

I have tied up the pole beans, eggplants, and tomatoes. I have also top dressed with the 8-2-4 over most of the plants. My daughter also helped me plant the ornamental corn.

Looking Good!

Virus infected squash.

The summer trial.

Good news! We sold our first value added organic products this week. I was able to sell some of our transplants to the local hardware store and they have already been moving out of the store. We sold 6 trays of 6 six packs vegetables tomatoes and peppers, and 2 trays of 24 cup peat pots. The proprietor Ronald Stevens of Stevens Hardware liked the plants and would like to buy more in the future. I don't think that he cares that the plants are totally organic but it makes me feel really good that they are and people are buying them. I believe next year we will charge a premium for the organic nature of the product and market the plants a little better. The trials for our summer crops are doing well except for the squash which got viruses almost immediately from whiteflies. I bought a screen but then forgot that the flowers were going to need to be fertilized by insects. We have a lot of bees and other natural pollinators around. The French melons are starting to get downey mildew but the cantaloupe, galia melons, cucumbers and tomatoes are doing great. I have already picked about 4 nice cucumbers off the vines, and a few yellow squash and one zucchini before they got viruses. I planted our sweet corn, two kinds of peppers and eggplants. I fertilized with Sustane fertilizer to follow the recommendations and I have sprayed copper for fungi and Entrust (which is an organic spinosad insecticide) for bugs on almost all of the plants. We will see how things progress. I hope to have some pictures of things this week. We lost our camera and are trying to replace it.

Spring Time

A severe close up of our first peach and blossoms. Sorry about the blur.

Spring has sprung. We have been bouncing back and forth from temperatures in the upper 30’s F. in the morning to the mid 80’s on other days in the afternoon. The plants are always confused at this time of the year. They don’t know whether to stay dormant or start growing. However, the grass is growing, the peaches are blossoming, and the citrus trees have their buds enlarging. Last week we planted about a fourth of the seeds into our trays, we are still waiting on seeds to arrive so we can finish our planting. I find that sometimes the produce market can be a great place to buy seeds. I bought some jalapeno and bell peppers and pulled out the seeds to use for our transplants. I also saved one of our cucumbers from last year and got all the seeds from that. That particular plant produced a whooping amount of cucumbers all season long. I was supper impressed. The fruit has even stayed hard since the end of summer last year. I am hoping to supply my own seeds on certain vegetables. I feel that if I harvest seeds from plants that don’t flower too early or late and that yield well, then I will in essence be breeding and selecting plants that are a perfect fit for my microclimate.

We have been harvesting carrots, lettuce, arugula, cauliflower, dandelion, mustards, and collards. Our romaine lettuce hasn’t grown well. I have harvested a few heads here and there, but the majority of the leaves have been mottled and misshapen. I can’t tell if it is thrips damage or a virus. A thrip is a very tiny yellow insect that scrapes leaves with its razor like mouthparts and then sucks up the juices. They are barely visible to the eye. They come in waves during the spring and are attracted to the color white. I remember back in graduate school when I had field trials, one day I wore a white T-shirt and started feeling an itch on my skin. I scratched for a while until it started to really bother me and I investigated in more detail. I realized that I was crawling with thrips and they were busy dining on my skin. Another person not wearing white was not as harassed as I was. Now I can tell when they are around because I remember what they feel like when they are rasping my skin with their tiny mouths.

I will start preparing for the market this weekend. I am glad I will have a better array of produce than our first market experience. I am also looking forward to see how our increased prices will fare. I probably will not bring as much landscape material and increase the amount of organic vegetables from our farm this time.

I hope to plant our new red leaf lettuce and another variety of escarole this week. I also hope to find some sweet potatoes in the store in order to plant them in our fields.